Achievement

IGERT Trainee Joseph Gerrien in J. Gerrein, J. Beane, J. Vick, Y. Gindin, C. Anderlind, S. Levy, P. Massion, F. Schembri, M.Lenburg, A.Spira (May 2010). Next generation sequencing of the bronchial airway transcriptome identifies novel gene and microRNA changes associated with smoking and lung-cancer. Oral presentation, Am. Thoracic Society, New Orleans. We profiled the transcriptomes of pooled bronchial airway epithelial cells obtained from healthy never and current smokers and smokers with and without lung cancer undergoing surgery for suspicion of lung cancer. The high MW and low MW fractions were sequenced. We also compared expression values obtained by RNA-seq to values from mRNA and miRNA microarrays. We found strong correlation for genes/miRNAs interrogated by microarrays, with most smoking and cancer related changes in expression being identified by sequencing and not by arrays. The analysis reveals differentially expressed isoforms and potential novel miRNAs.